May'19 Board Book

industry , and has a knack for disarming fervent right-wingers , would seem a good source of information.

“I give her team a lot of credit for reaching out,” Mitloehner says. “If we really are serious about making a difference in carbon emissions, you cannot do this without agriculture involved.” He says he was dismayed to see Ocasio-Cortez blaming “cow farts” for greenhouse gas emissions. Technically, she’s right: As cattle digest food, they release nitrous oxide and ammonia in their manure , gases that have planet-warming potential. But the more abundant greenhouse gas, methane, comes out mostly through their burps , which makes them a more significant driver of climate change. None of this is funny to Mitloehner, by the way, whose research involves putting cows in air-tight tents to measure the content of their “eruptions.” Mitloehner claims that after his tweet, Ocasio-Cortez removed “all mentions” of cow farts from social media. I couldn’t find any such posts from her about said cows, and neither the congresswoman’s office, nor New Consensus, returned requests for comment. It is true, however, that the much-maligned fact sheet, and the line about “farting cows,” has disappeared. Briefly, its language was changed to “emissions from cows,” but that too was deleted. Mitloehner says Ocasio-Cortez’s policy team told him the reference was “pretty much a mistake” that was quickly remedied.

Flickr / Charles Krause

“Farting cows,” Mitloehner says, trivializes what’s otherwise a very serious issue